Syria & the global class war

Jobs are disappearing. Homes are ­being foreclosed and families tossed into the streets. Super hurricanes, spawned by climate change, batter cities. Schools are being shut down, and prisons are springing up in their place. Police bullets are taking lives of innocent Black and Brown people. Hunger, homelessness, mass unemployment and racist mass incarceration are becoming “the new normal” in the United States.

At the top of all this are the bankers and bosses. The Wall Street 1% — with their wealth, power and latchkeys to the governments of the world — have no answer to the chaos. Bank bailouts, drone attacks, elections, TV propaganda — none of the capitalists’ usual tricks are working. The chaos and explosions are continuing, because capitalism is at a dead end.

In their desperation, the corporate elites and their governments turn toward a solution they have long utilized: war.

Trillions of dollars are made from militarism. For the capitalists of the world, especially in the U.S., who own all the mechanisms for producing tanks, missiles, drones, fighter planes and other means of destruction, nothing has been more profitable than war.

So in this hour of desperation, as their economic system lurches and grinds its way to a halt, the capitalists bomb and destroy.

First Libya, now Syria

Libya once had the highest standard of living on the African continent. But now the Libyan government that once defied Wall Street and Washington has been destroyed, and the result has led to misery for the Libyan people. Yet, the destruction of Libya did not save capitalism and the crisis continues.

The current focus of imperialism’s wrath is Syria. The U.S.-backed regimes in Saudi Arabia and Turkey are shipping in stockpiles of weapons to a group of “rebels” who slaughter people without pause. These rebels promise that if they are victorious, the Christians and Alawites of Syria will be slaughtered. They have been sent to create death, chaos and destruction.

Numerous videos of atrocities allegedly committed by these Syrian mercenaries have circulated on the internet. They depict killing and torture. One video shows a 10-year-old child being forced to behead a prisoner. These are the so-called “freedom fighters” championed by the capitalist media and funded indirectly by tax dollars from U.S. workers. (rt.com/news, Dec. 11)

Why is Syria a target? Its Baathist government led by Bashar Al-Assad is not a government of Wall Street puppets. Instead it provides health care to the people. It has supported the Palestinian resistance. It allows communists to play leading roles in some levels of the government.

The people of Syria are resisting. Christians, Alawites, Muslims, socialists — people from all sectors of Syrian society are joining together. Community militias are being formed to defeat the U.S.-backed mercenaries who seek to drive the country into ruin. The Syrian people have pushed back these rebels many times, so the imperialists are considering other methods.

U.S. troops are now in Turkey, just across the border from Syria, setting up NATO missile batteries. On Dec. 27, thousands of people took to the streets in Turkey to protest the presence of the NATO missiles. The massive rally was called by the Turkish Communist Party. PressTV quotes one Turkish protester as saying, “Americans are trying to steal all the resources in the Middle East. We, the Turkish people, will do whatever it takes to prevent them.” (Dec. 27)

Some people in the U.S. may feel that Syria and the Middle East are far away and that events going on there have no impact on what happens in the U.S.

But in the U.S., homes are being foreclosed by the same bankers and the government that fund the destruction of homes in Syria. Our schools are being closed by the same forces that fund the Israeli army that kills teachers and school children in Gaza. The drones used to kill people in Pakistan are now being used within U.S. borders to spy on us in a continuing buildup of state repression.

Sam Marcy, the founder of Workers World Party, said workers in the U.S. have no “independent destiny.” The global 1% is the enemy of the people of Syria, the workers and oppressed of the U.S. and all humanity. Just like Syrians are coming together to resist the rebels, and workers in Turkey are taking the streets to protest NATO missiles, workers and youth in the U.S. must stand with Syria.

The chaos unfolding across the world is a life-and-death struggle between the workers and oppressed of the world on one side and their oppressors on the other. In this global class war, which side are you on?